


Yesterday, Tomorrow, Today, and Other Conundrums

by RiddleAfar (Snyuuk)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon Compliant, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Not!Sasha character exploration, S5 Jon and Martin meet S2 Jon and Martin, Time Travel, humor mixed with the ethical quandaries of time travel, more like canon takes a quick detour
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-25 11:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30088617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snyuuk/pseuds/RiddleAfar
Summary: Their hands are clasped as they stumble through to the other side. By the time they turn around, the door is predictably gone.Jon gets the immediate sense that something has gone very, very wrong.Jon and Martin unintentionally end up in the past. Staying hidden while they try to find a way back to their own timeline becomes an increasingly dangerous task, especially as Jon's paranoid past-self demands answers they're not sure they can give.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 13
Kudos: 66





	Yesterday, Tomorrow, Today, and Other Conundrums

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is the product of an inside joke between me and my girlfriend that got completely out of hand. Then S5 jmart navigating the S2 timeline turned into a concept we became kind of obsessed with exploring, and now here we are. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Their hands are clasped as they stumble through to the other side. By the time they turn around, the door is predictably gone.

Jon gets the immediate sense that something has gone very, very wrong.

“We… We made it?” Martin asks from beside him. Then, with a sigh of relief, “We made it.”

Martin’s grip slackens as he heads for the office door, but Jon reflexively tightens his hold on Martin’s hand, anchoring him back. “Wait. Let’s just… wait a second before we go through anymore doors.”

“Uh, okay?” Martin’s brow furrows. “Everything alright?”

“I’m not sure.” Jon takes a tentative step forward that Martin mirrors. “It certainly _looks_ like my office. Remarkably so.”

“Are we complaining that the archives haven’t transformed into some pit of endless nightmare-horrors and doom?”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit suspicious that it hasn’t?”

“I guess so,” Martin mumbles. Jon takes another cautious step forward, and Martin sticks close as they both look around curiously.

“Something isn’t right. My connection to the eye… it feels strange. Distant, somehow.”

“Again, is that a complaint?” Jon gives Martin a withering, exhausted look in response, to which Martin sighs. “Yeah, alright, fine.” This time Martin does shake off Jon’s hand in order to explore the space more freely. Jon, apprehensively, does the same.

The office is surprisingly put together. Jon inspects the desk to find a half-filled mug of tea and a statement scattered about beside a tape recorder that somehow isn’t running. Jon even has to double check to make sure that’s the case.

His first instinct is to pick up the statement and start reading, but he stops himself with a great amount of effort. If it’s been left for him—by Jonah, or maybe even Annabelle—he can’t afford to fall for that again.

“We could still be in the spiral,” Jon says instead. Adamantly ignoring the papers just below him.

“I don’t think so? Whenever I’m in the spiral it feels like my head is being torn in 100 different directions. This just feels… normal.” Martin says, bending at the knees to inspect some of the books on what is supposedly Jon’s bookshelf. “I think we’re really in the archives.”

“But this isn’t right,” Jon says again. “The last time I was here, Daisy, Basira and I were barricading ourselves against a hoard of attackers. They would have torn this place apart.”

“Yeah, but, is this _really_ your office? We’re in the institute—or the panopticon, or whatever—sure, but what about dream logic and all that?”

“An apocalypse that doesn’t transform its hub of literal fear-power into a waking nightmare but instead acts as a custodial worker?” Jon asks, dry as the desert.

“I don’t know! Maybe?” Martin rubs at his eyes, “I’m too tired to argue evil eye-demon logic with you.”

They both go very still.

“Tired?” Jon asks, his voice breaking on the word. Suddenly aware of how bone-deep his fatigue is becoming. Martin looks to Jon, eyes wide with the realization.

“Knackered.”

Jon rushes to Martin’s side just as Martin wrenches the door to the office open, but before Jon can even get a glimpse of what’s beyond, Martin is slamming the door shut again.

“What? What’s wrong?” Jon asks desperately. Martin looks to Jon like he’s seen a ghost.

“You—”

“Hello?” Comes a voice from the other side of the door. _His_ voice. “Is someone there?”

“Is that—?” Jon is cut off by Martin’s furious nodding.

“What do we do?!” Martin asks in a harsh whisper.

“I—I don’t know, I barely know what’s going on—what is— _what_?!”

“Hello?” Comes Jon’s voice through the door again—louder, closer, irritated.

“Hide! We should hide!” Martin cries.

“ _Where?_ ” The word is barely out of his mouth before Martin is tugging him back by his arm.

The room is bare save for the desk and the bookshelves. The only place to hide is under the desk. Something Jon doesn’t even realize until Martin is pushing him underneath it. Jon feels very much like an accordion, but he bunches himself smaller to try and allow Martin to push in next to him, but Martin doesn’t even get a chance to squeeze in when he hears the door open.

“Who’s in here?” An accusatory tone calls out. There’s no doubt about it—it’s _his_ voice. Jon clutches at the hem of Martin’s shirt to try and tug him down out of reflexive panic, but it’s too late, because— “Martin? What on earth are you doing in my office?”

Martin casts him one last glance before he shoots up.

“Uh! Jon? Jon! Hi!” Jon hears him squeak out. “Sorry! I was… I was looking! For you. I was looking for you.”

There’s a long moment of silence where Jon feels his heart stop. He reaches out for Martin’s pant leg, but Martin responds by subtly kicking him off.

“I thought you went home hours ago,” the voice finally replies. Jon is burning with curiosity to see who or _what_ this thing with his voice is. It must at least look like him if Martin isn’t immediately screaming. Instead, he’s left to stare holes into Martin’s knees.

“Sure, yes. Yes I did. I did go home. Right. But then I… came back?”

“Obviously. What I’m failing to understand is why you did so at all. Were you planning on camping here?”

“Camping? No, I—o-oh this!” Jon can hear the rustle of Martin’s large backpack. “I was, no—I was… I was on my way to meet a friend! S… Steve.”

“Steve?” Jon is sure that whatever expression the voice is making, he is, too.

Martin’s response comes a mile a minute. “Yup! He wanted to borrow my backpack. He’s planning a whole trip through the alps, I think it was? Anyway, he lives near the institute and I thought I would stop by, and—and check in.”

“Check-in?” The voice asks.

“Y-yes. This is me. Checking in.” Martin clears his throat, possibly trying to dispel the clear mania in it. “How are you doing?”

“Martin, are you alright?” The voice somehow manages to sound both concerned and incensed at the same time. “You look like hell.”

“Okay, well. That’s. Rude,” Martin chokes out. Jon can hear footsteps coming towards the desk, and suddenly Martin’s legs are leaving his window of vision. “B-Besides! You’re one to talk! It’s late isn’t it? Like, later than is appropriate for work hours, I’m guessing. You should go home and get some proper rest. You can’t stay here in the archives all night!”

“I don’t believe that’s any of your concern.”

“It is, though! If you sleep here overnight, you’ll just be all grumpy tomorrow and—and say something cross to—to Tim, and I’ll have to hear about it all day.” Jon mouths _Tim?_ to himself under the desk. “So, go home! Actually, to make sure you do, I’ll walk you out.”

“That’s definitely not necessary,” comes the voice, starting to sound overwhelmed at Martin’s manic insistence.

“Yes it is! Come on, you can’t live here—it’s not healthy! I mean it, let’s go.”

Jon feels terror drop in his chest at the sound of Martin walking away, but before he can do anything, two pairs of footsteps are colliding against the thin, stained carpet of the office.

“Martin! _Martin!_ ” Is the last thing Jon hears before the door slams shut.

Adrenaline creeps out of his body bit by bit as silence passes through the office, but Jon can’t bring himself to move. At first, from shock, but then very quickly from exhaustion.

“Fucking— _what_?” is the last thing he manages to say before he blacks out.

——

It’s early when Martin arrives at the institute. Too early, probably. He thinks it might be becoming a bad habit of his, what with how he hasn’t said a proper good morning to Rosie for nearly two months now, as he always seems to arrive well before she’s perched at her desk.

It’s just, well… it’s been hard to fall asleep in his own flat since the whole Prentiss incident. It seems completely counterintuitive that the archives would feel safer somehow, since it’s where all of them nearly died via evil, flesh-hungry worms, but it is what it is and Martin doesn’t really like to think about it too hard.

Besides, coming in early usually means getting a few extra moments with Jon in the morning, since Martin is pretty sure he’s started sleeping here most nights. And he thinks the extra social interaction might be good for Jon, who seems to be acting more and more frazzled by the day.

He’s worried, that’s all. He doesn’t like the idea of Jon holing himself up in this dusty basement with no one to talk to. Martin hadn’t liked it when _he_ was living in the institute, and the least he can do is return the favor from the late nights where Jon would linger behind as if to make certain Martin would be okay camping out in the storage room’s stiff and squeaky cot.

That’s why it feels a little strange when Martin sets his messenger bag on his desk and doesn’t hear a sound from Jon’s office.

Usually by this hour Martin can already hear the shuffling of papers, or the soft mumbles of Jon talking to himself, or the creak of his office chair. Maybe he really did go home last night, or, more likely, he’s fallen asleep at his desk again.

Martin knocks gently against the office door and creaks it open when he doesn’t get a response.

There’s no one at the desk, and Martin feels both relief and a (hardly relevant) flutter of disappointment at Jon’s absence.

This is good. Jon needs more sleep after all. Martin lets himself in to clear away the dirty mug on the desk, and that’s when he notices the arm strewn out on the floor from behind the desk.

That relief drains out of Martin in an instant, and his fingers are already going numb when he rushes over to the other side of the desk, knocking the rolling desk chair out of the way as he does, and crouching down next to Jon who is curled _under the bloody desk_ and looking like a corpse.

“Jon? Jon?!” Martin cries out, grabbing his arm and feeling around frantically for a pulse. “Oh my god, _Jon_!”

Martin lets out a shuddering breath of relief when Jon starts to stir, his eyes blinking open bit by bit. His heart is hammering in his chest—he knew he should’ve said something about Jon insisting to sleep here night after night.

“ _Christ_ , Jon, what are you—”

“Martin!”

Martin gets absolutely no time to regulate his breathing again before Jon has snapped awake and placed a gentle, urgent, _tender_ hand against Martin’s cheek.

“Martin! Are you alright? Oh God, I’m so sorry, you left and I—I fell unconscious before I could go and find you and— _ow_.” Jon cuts himself off when he tries to sit up and hits his head against the desk.

Jon still has his hand against his cheek. Jonathan Sims still has his hand _against his cheek_. Cupping it like some… some Victorian gentleman.

“J-Jon?!”

“Help me out of here,” he demands, not unkindly, and then his hand moves from Martin’s cheek to wrap around his hand.

Martin can only dumbly nod and help pull Jon out from under the desk, hoping his palm is too sweaty.

“Are you alright?” Jon asks again as he stands, sounding desperate and earnest. Martin is a lot of things right now, but _alright_ isn’t exactly the word he’d use.

“ _Me?_ ” Martin chokes out instead. “You were the one passed out under your desk! Are you okay?!”

Jon looks at him for a moment—that look he does that always makes it feel like he can see through skin—and all at once Jon’s expression drops into something sobering. He releases Martin’s hand immediately as if he’s made some kind of mistake, and Martin does his best not to let that sting.

“Oh, Lord.”

Martin watches as he looks down at the desk, clutching at the statement there and reading it over with a wild expression.

“Statement of Thomas Neil…” He says to himself as if he’s completely forgotten Martin is in the room.

Martin clears his throat. “Jon, if you’ve just collapsed… maybe… maybe you shouldn’t jump into another statement first thing?”

Jon looks back at him, that wild expression feeling like a whirlwind when it collides with Martin.

“Yes. Yes, you’re right. I should. I should go home,” Jon says, placing the statement back on the desk rather indelicately.

“Really?”

“Just, uh. Yes. At least to change. Maybe. Take a nap. Sorry, I was having a, uh, a bad dream when you found me.”

“Oh, right. That… makes sense?” Martin takes another good look at Jon, and something else catches his attention that just seems to add to the pile of incredibly strange things on this incredibly strange morning. “Has your hair always been that long?”

Jon touches at it absently, expression tightening. “I’m. I’m very good at hiding it. What time is it? I don’t want to, ah, worry the others.”

“It’s half seven, I think,” Martin says. “No one’s in yet.”

“Good. Good, then I’ll just head home. Thank you for your concern, Martin. It’s best I be going now.” The words come out in a rush, and before Martin can do or say anything else, Jon practically runs out of the office and out of the archives.

Martin is left to linger behind in the empty room, face still flushed from the human tornado that calls itself Jonathan Sims.

——

Jon pulls the hood of the oversized hoodie over his head when he creaks open one of the side doors to the institute. He is very aware of how suspicious he looks, but for now suspicious is better than the alternative.

He creeps against the side of the building, keeping his head ducked as he does. It’s unnerving walking both in a place that is so intimately familiar and one that he’s sure he’s never seen before in his life. It almost feels as though he’s operating off a reflection rather than the real thing, making it feel clumsy and disoriented.

Unfortunately, he thinks he might have pieced together exactly why that is. But any discoveries of that nature will have to wait until he is sure Martin— _his_ Martin is safe.

Jon rounds a corner into a familiar little nook where the dumpsters are kept locked up, but makes sure to skirt the edge so that he’s still pressed against the wall further to the left. Finally, he lets his hood fall down and looks around to make sure no one is watching.

“Martin?” Jon whisper-yells towards the dumpsters. When there’s no response, he tries again a bit louder. “Martin?”

A moment of silence, and then a rustling from behind one of the dumpsters. Jon finally lets himself breathe when he sees Martin round the corner.

“Jon!”

Martin rushes towards him, and the two embrace with all the haggard strength they have. Jon can finally feel himself relax with Martin’s hands wrapping around his back. The warmth of his chest eases the tension Jon can feel cricked up from his heels to his skull.

“Oh, thank God.” Jon sighs into him. “Are you alright?”

Martin huffs a sardonic laugh into the top of Jon’s head, that Jon can’t help but smile at.

“Relatively, I mean.”

“I’m just glad you knew where to find me.” Martin pulls away to look at him but stays close. “This place is still a blind spot, right?”

“We’ll have to assume so for now,” Jon relents. Years ago—after Prentiss, but before The Unknowing—the dumpsters were nothing more than Jon’s smoking area. Hidden just out of view of the CCTV cameras installed for the institute. Back then, he hadn’t questioned how he’d Known that, but it was certainly a relief to have one little area of respite when he’d returned to the institute after being cleared for murder.

It was around that time Martin would join him, too. Not for a cigarette, but just to keep him company. Maybe just to escape the stuffy, tense air the archives had become at the time. Once, they’d spent nearly an hour out here chatting after Jon had returned from the states. They hadn’t even noticed until the sun dipped below the skyline and the long shadows of the building had caused the air to chill. It was nice.

“You’re sure you’re alright?”

“Other than being woken up by a policeman this morning, right as rain,” Martin says, a flat sarcasm hissing into his voice.

“A policeman? What happened?”

“Well, after I walked you—Jon—God, _whoever_ out of the institute, I realized I didn’t have the keys to get back in. I could feel myself about to pass out, but I knew if I did here—well, I figured that wouldn’t be great. I hobbled over to the park across the street, found a bench and, yeah. The officer mistook me for a tramp this morning.”

“You slept outside?” Jon takes hold of Martin’s hands and grasps them firmly.

“I’m alright, I promise. Actually, here.” Martin slides his backpack to the front, rummages around until he’s pressing something in Jon’s hand.

“A power bar?”

“We have to eat again, don’t we?”

“Where did you get this?”

Martin gets a sour look on his face. “Look, I’m not proud of it, but it’s not as if we have any real money that hasn’t turned into bugs or eyeballs or slime or something! So, I just—I nicked them from a corner store.”

“How quickly one devolves to a life of crime,” Jon teases.

“Oh, shut up and eat it.”

“You’re right. Best to dispose of the evidence as soon as possible.”

Martin gives Jon a playful shove, which draws out a chuckle from the shorter man.

Obediently, Jon unwraps the snack and takes a bite out of it. It’s weird to eat again. He knows he must’ve eaten something at Upton House, but that’s long since faded from his memory. Which means the last real meal he’s had was before the change. Jon had made them eggs for breakfast, he remembers. They were a little overcooked.

“Jon, where are we?” Martin asks, bringing him out of his thoughts. “I mean, are we—is this really… you know?”

“The past?” Jon asks. Martin’s lips tighten as he nods.

Jon shuts his eyes. He tries to Know. He feels Beholding surge through him. He finds he can still call upon it, though it feels harder to reach. He tries to usher the knowledge into his mind, but instead it feels like double vision. As if his brain is drunk somehow and seeing two. There’s information there, things he can see if he squints hard enough but—

“ _Ah._ ” Jon hisses, pressing his hand against his head as the headache blooms.

“Hey, hey, careful,” Martin gently chides, placing a gentle hand through Jon’s hair to soothe him. Jon drops the connection and lets it slither out of him with a sigh of relief.

“I can’t quite see it. Or, I can, but it’s… blurry. Like trying to watch two films projected over each other on the same screen and trying to parse out which is which. But I do know that whatever _this_ is, it’s not a domain.”

“So then we really are in the past,” Martin asserts. Jon just gives a relenting shrug.

“Maybe. If we are, there was a statement on the desk. Thomas Neil. That would put us sometime in September 2016, most likely.”

“Right… Wow.”

“How did you know, by the way?” Jon asks.

“Know what?”

“Where— _when_ we are. Last night, you mentioned Tim to the… other me.”

“Lucky guess, mostly? That Jon had the worm scars but none of the others. I sort of just took a gamble on it?”

Jon considers this for a long moment as something heavy and mournful weighs on his brow. He knows Martin can read it when a gentle hand is placed on his shoulder.

“It’d be nice to see him again,” Martin suggests.

“Yes. Yes, it would,” Jon says, clearing the constricting tension in his throat. “But for now, we need to figure out how to get back to our own time. Something that will be challenging enough without any income, shelter, or resources. Unless you’re interested in becoming a serial corner store caper.”

“Oh… right, sure.”

“We could find a way into the tunnels. Leitner should still be alive, and he’d have resources we could possibly use. If anyone has to know our situation, I unfortunately believe he’d be our best option. It’s not as if he has anyone to tell.”

“I guess.”

“It won’t be a palace, but we’ll be safe from Jonah while we figure out how to fix this.”

Martin doesn’t say anything, staring holes into his boots, face pinched and contemplative.

“Martin?” He prompts.

“It’s just… Do we have to go back? If we were sent back in time then maybe this is our chance, yeah? Forget the panopticon, forget Jonah! We can stop it from ever happening in the first place. We can do the whole—y’know—go back in time and kill Hitler thing.”

“That’s not how it works, Martin.”

“You _just_ said you don’t Know how it works!”

“I said I can’t see the whole picture, but I know it’s not that simple!”

“Why not?” Martin’s voice is so desperate, and it makes Jon’s heart ache.

“My connection to The Eye… It’s distant, but it’s not gone.”

“I don’t like it when you’re cryptic.” Martin sighs. “What does that mean?”

“It means… It means that The Watcher is still being fed. Just because we might have escaped it momentarily, doesn’t mean that it’s not still happening. This time—this dimension—it’s not ours. Even if we were to divert an apocalypse from happening here, it won’t change the fact that there’s still a whole world of people out there who will continue being tormented because of me. I don’t just get a reset button for that.”

Jon had forgotten how physical shame could be. Something about having his body be so _human_ again makes the emotion as heavy as lead, sinking into his skin with a pressure as unforgiving as that of an ocean bed, and it just makes him so goddamn tired.

“Oh, Jon,” he hears Martin sigh, long-suffering and sympathetic as he draws Jon in for another hug. Briefly, Jon feels like he can rest the whole weight of his body on Martin—as if being allowed the quickest of reprieves from having to carry the heavy load that he’s become.

“Just promise me we’ll find a way to do something before we leave, okay?”

Jon sighs into Martin’s chest. “We can talk about it. Once we figure out a way back.”

Thankfully, Martin accepts the answer and squeezes Jon a little tighter before pulling away.

“As much as I’d rather not become flatmates with Jurgen Leitner, I guess we have been through worse,” Martin says. Jon snorts at that. “But how are we meant to get into the tunnels in the first place? We’d need a key— _and_ we’d have to go back to the archives.”

Jon thinks for a moment. “We can hide out in the library bathrooms until everyone leaves for the night to avoid getting locked out of the institute—no one ever goes in there anyway. Once it’s dark, I can steal the key from Elias’s office, we’ll grab some torches from the storage room, and we can go from there.”

“Oh, right, steal the key from _Jonah’s_ office—no big deal.”

“It isn’t. I’ve done it before.”

“What? When?”

“Let’s focus at the task at hand, please.”

“Fine, fine,” Martin exasperates. “What about you? Or, past you. It’s not exactly like you kept normal office hours. I mean, he was there last night.”

“He’ll leave eventually. If it really is September then… around this time I was… investigating Tim—”

“Stalking, you mean?”

Jon’s face pinches in embarrassment. “Point is, I would always leave right around ten in the evening to do so. If we wait until then, we’ll have our opportunity.”

“Right, then. I guess we’re spending the rest of the afternoon in the library toilets.”

“Could be worse,” Jon teases.

“Yeah, yeah.” Martin takes Jon’s hand in his own, and Jon squeezes it like a lifeline.

——

Jon has an inclination to blame Martin for his running late this morning.

After being shooed out of building rather jarringly by Martin, Jon realized he’d been forced to leave behind his camera, notes, and jacket back in his office. It was enough to have Jon begrudgingly head home rather than to Tim’s flat as he’d originally planned.

Jon can admit he did manage to get some sleep. But the novelty of sleeping in his own bed was quick to wear off, and soon enough his slumber turned restless. Even so, he still managed to fitfully sleep through his alarm. And for what purpose? Jon hardly feels any more rested than usual with this so-called “good night’s sleep” that everyone raves on about.

He doesn’t return Rosie’s greeting as he rushes past her towards the stairwell to the basement, and when he finally bursts into the archives, Tim and Sasha lift their heads towards the noise.

“Hey, boss,” Tim greets. “Sleep in?”

“Good morning, Jon,” Sasha adds, prim and polite. He stands a little straighter—her posture is always so taut that lately it always tends to remind him of his slouch.

“Morning,” comes Jon’s curt reply to both. He scans the room. “Where’s Martin?”

“I believe he’s in the break room,” Sasha says.

“Need him for something?” Tim asks.

“No. No, I don’t,” Jon says and firmly shuts the door behind him when he enters his office.

As quietly as he can, he makes quick work of searching the room for anything unusual.

Everything feels one degree off. The position of his office chair. The arrangement of papers on his desk. Martin must have rifled through some of his things before Jon caught him last night, and it’s hardly a relief when he finds everything accounted for after a brief and frantic search.

He makes a note of it, but pushes it away for the moment. He can’t afford to dwell on it with the others still here.

For now, he has work to do. Jon straightens out the statement of Thomas Neil that he had started looking into the night before, turns on the tape recorder, and begins.

It’s just as he’s about to finish giving his final thoughts when he hears a knock on his office door, and a moment later Martin is peering in.

“Just checking to see if you wanted some tea.”

Jon’s brows furrow as he looks him up and down. Martin in the doorway like he’s hesitant to come in. His tone is sheepish and careful, and he looks just as put together as he always does. Last night his clothes had looked mauled and dirty, his face was stubbly, his eyes tired, and his hair—

“Did you dye your hair?” Jon asks like it’s an accusation. He could’ve sworn there were streaks of white in it the night before.

“What? Are you— _My_ hair? Um?” Martin fingers at one of his loose curls, looking disproportionately confused at the simple question. “No?”

Suspicion flares in Jon’s gut, and he keeps his harsh gaze centered on Martin who finally walks fully into the office and shuts the door behind him.

“So,” Martin draws out when he realizes Jon isn’t going to do much else other than stare him down. “How are you feeling?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, um. Did you get some sleep?”

Jon throws a harrowing glare Martin’s way. “I don’t need to be coddled, Martin.”

“Right. No. I guess not, just, well. I mean, you did look close to death. I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”

“Even still, that’s no excuse for your—your _audacious_ behavior.”

“My _what_?” Martin asks, sounding suddenly put-out.

“Is there a reason why you felt the need to practically shove me out of my office?”

“What are you talking about? All I did was suggest you _maybe_ take a break!”

“That’s quite a diplomatic way of putting it,” Jon grumbles.

“Hang on, you were the one—! I mean—!” Martin’s cheeks flush red as he searches for the words.

“I’m the one _what_?” Jon demands. “Please, I’d love to hear an explanation for what I can only assume was temporary insanity on your part.”

Martin’s eyes narrow, he looks as though he’s wracking his brain for something—as if he’s genuinely confused that his behavior could be construed as anything other than ridiculous.

“You know what? Fine. I promise not to _coddle_ you when you’re collapsed and half-dead in your office in future—”

“—I think that’s a bit dramatic—”

“— _If_ you promise to start taking care of yourself! That means leaving the institute at reasonable times, getting real sleep, and eating real food! You should know you scared me half to death!”

“I can hardly extend much sympathy for that when you were the one sneaking around my office uninvited.”

Martin pinches the bridge of his nose, looking as though every ounce of his energy is being redirected to help calm a sudden flare of irritation, which only serves to annoy Jon further. Why is Martin acting like _Jon_ is the unreasonable one here?

“Jon. Please. Just promise me you’ll go home at a reasonable hour tonight. Promise me if I leave you alone you won’t just start living here.”

Jon assesses him for a long while. Martin always has that unassuming earnestness about him. He ignores the unpleasant twist in his chest at the decision that this sincerity is something that will need to be properly investigated.

“Fine,” Jon says, being sure to sound put-out enough for it to be convincing. “Fine. I suppose I have been staying later than necessary recently.”

Martin gives a visible sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“If that’s all, then.” Jon gestures to his office door.

“Yeah, alright,” Martin relents, and gently closes the door behind him.

Jon grunts when he realizes the tape recorder is still running from Mr. Neil’s statement. He turns it off with a huff, and, in the next moment, pulls out the second tape recorder from his bottom desk drawer.

He clicks it on, and the room fills with the sound of the magnetic whir.

“Supplemental.

“In light of recent events I have decided to post-pone my investigation of Tim and, instead, focus on Martin again. Last night, I caught him in my office after hours. When I confronted him, he was nervous and high-strung, and made some meager excuse about wanting to check-in with me.

Today he insisted that I go home at a reasonable time for the sake of my health.

I believe there’s something in my office that he’s trying to find, and I imagine my late nights at the institute have been impeding on that search. I can’t imagine what — tapes maybe? Perhaps he found out about the evidence Basira shared with me. But if that’s what he’s looking for, that might mean…

No, I shouldn’t assume just yet. Even if his behavior has been undeniably suspicious.

I’ve led him to believe that I will start maintaining normal working hours going forward, and, by doing so, I should be able to discern exactly what he’s hiding from me by staking out the archives. I’ll begin my investigation tonight.

End supplemental.”


End file.
